


A Man of Dubious Honour

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Arthur Ketch Being an Asshole, Attempted Sexual Assault, But He Has A Twisted Notion of Honour, Castiel (Supernatural) Whump, Dean Winchester is Protective of Castiel, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), M/M, Murder, Original Character Death(s), Protective Castiel (Supernatural), Sick Castiel (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 23:40:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18158561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: After Castiel gets hurt protecting him, Ketch knows he owes the angel.He might be many things, but he is not a man who leaves a debt unpaid.So when he catches someone sneaking into the unconscious angel’s room at night, with less than proper intentions, his chance to repay Castiel comes around sooner than expected.





	A Man of Dubious Honour

**Author's Note:**

> If you’re worried about how far the assault on Cas goes, please skip to the end notes before you read on.

The ice pack would do little to help the swelling, Ketch knew, but it did ease his discomfort.

Of course, it could have been much worse; had he brought back a dead angel instead of an unconscious one, Dean would likely have shot him on the spot.

Castiel’s condition was the difference between him surviving and being, grudgingly, allowed to remain in the bunker, and those brothers burying his body in a shallow grave.

It irked him that they showed so little gratitude but grudges died hard with those two; Ketch had resigned himself to never quite being able to balance out his _sins_ , committed while following orders, no matter what he did in the meantime.

Which meant it was just as well he cared not at all for the Winchesters’ opinion of him. They were forced allies in this, and Ketch would do what it took to accomplish two things: one, defeat Michael to prevent him from ruining the world; two, ensure he was not cast out of the bunker because if was a very different world out there without the patronage and support of his former masters (and he wasn’t foolish enough to not know how they would interpret his return from the dead and apparent working relationship with their worst enemies).

But then he sullenly reminded himself there was a third thing, and he stood up and followed Carmichael as he skulked down the corridor.

The problem, as Ketch saw it, with Castiel was that he was astonishingly naive for a creature millennia old. But he put that down to the halo’s fascination with, and affection for, humanity.

He had taken the reputed instructions of God as, if one would pardon the pun, Gospel, and cherished the humans as best he could, the Winchesters in particular, at great personal cost.

Like earlier that day, when he had pushed Ketch aside, and gotten his stupid self bitten by the Carak, a venomous spirit-snake unleashed by some very foolish children who thought it ‘cool’ to trifle with things they couldn’t hope to understand let alone control.

Those children were dead, now, consumed by the creature they’d summoned (which suited Ketch, since he would only have had to kill them, anyway, to ensure they didn’t demonstrate such stupidity again), and Ketch knew he would have shared their fate if not for that self sacrificing halo.

Had their roles been reversed, and his survival not been dependent on the Winchesters’ good will, he wouldn’t have risked himself for the celestial.

But things were how they were, and he now owed the creature, and that didn’t sit well with him at all.

Ketch had no illusions about the man that he was, but he never left a debt unpaid.

And, it seemed, the issue of how to settle the one he owed to the Winchesters’ angel was about to be resolved.

++

Ketch had many skills, but perhaps chief among them was the ability to generally go unnoticed.

He was expert at not drawing attention to himself, which came in handy when he wanted to observe the fluid dynamics operating in the bunker since they’d rescued the unfortunate inhabitants of that other world.

He had kept his eyes and ears open, and learned much: about Michael, the tactics they’d used against their angelic enemies (the ones that worked, and the ones that didn’t) and about their feelings towards Castiel, the bunker’s resident angel.

Some of them were stoutly for the angel; he was different from the ones that had wrought desolation upon their world.

Some saw him as no different at all; an angel was an angel, no matter that it seemed the Winchesters had ‘tamed’ him.

And then there was Carmichael.

Honestly, how Castiel seemed unaware of the man’s intentions was a mystery to Ketch. He had watched him stalk Castiel, following him with a boldness Ketch had marvelled at.

But desire had made a fool of many a man, and Ketch had known it was only a matter of time before Carmichael’s covetousness forced him to act.

Tonight, it seemed, and Ketch supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised.

After all, Castiel was vulnerable, and alone, since the exhausted Winchesters had finally been reassured that all the halo needed to recover from the ghost-bite was time.

Of course, they didn’t know about Carmichael, since Castiel had said nothing to them. Ketch wasn’t sure if this was because Castiel himself was unaware, or hadn’t realised the implications of Carmichael’s actions (the theory Ketch most favoured) or simply didn’t care because he failed to see Carmichael as a threat.

But then he hadn’t foreseen being inadvertently left to the man’s dark notions, either.

Ketch kept very quiet as he followed the man down the hall, and held back to watch him carefully open the door to Castiel’s room, and sneak inside.

Then he crept after him.

The door was open the tiniest crack, and Ketch peered through; he could see just enough to know that Carmichael was standing over the halo, probably nervous now that the moment had come.

Yes, his moment had come in more ways than one.

Ketch opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it quickly behind him in one smooth movement.

Carmichael’s hand was cupping the angel’s jaw, an almost gentle gesture that surely belied what would come next.

He stared dumbfounded at Ketch, as if unable to believe he had been caught; Ketch could see him scrabbling to come up with a reasonable excuse for being in there, alone, with a vulnerable sick angel.

And then, finally, he went a very misguided place.

“They all say you hate him, anyway.”

Ketch smiled, and Carmichael did too, until something in the Brit’s eyes caused that smile to fade and something more primal take its place.

Carmichael had the look about him then of a man who knew he was going to die.

“That’s true,” Ketch said, and closed the gap between them, pushing Carmichael back from the angel hard enough to stagger him. “But I’m afraid it just isn’t that simple. And you, dear fellow, should really have kept your hands to yourself.”

++

After, Ketch went about things as meticulously as he did everything. 

He checked Castiel over quickly, but thoroughly. The angel seemed to have suffered no molestation at Carmichael’s hands, confirming Ketch had likely gotten there just in time.

He briefly checked Castiel’s wound, and found it less swollen looking that before; no doubt by morning he would have eradicated the venom from his system and be back to his normal, irritating, celestial self.

Satisfied at that, Ketch hefted Carmichael’s body over his shoulder and took it from the bunker, taking full advantage of the late hour and exhausted inhabitants.

He didn’t go too far, just far enough that a freshly dug grave wouldn’t be stumbled across, and quickly laid Carmichael to his rest.

The man had the reputation, even among his fellows, of being feckless, unreliable. It wouldn’t be any great leap for everyone else to believe he’d simply got fed up and left the bunker, never to return.

Even if the Winchesters doubted it, Ketch knew he could plant enough suspicion in their minds as to Carmichael’s nature that locating him was something not a priority (and with the situation with Michael, they would definitely had bigger fish to fry).

And, sure enough, the next day was taken up with caring for their halo, who was awake, and confused, and remembered nothing of the man who’d come to hurt him in the night.

He remembered nothing about the one who’d saved him, either, and while Carmichael’s disappearance was noted, and a perfunctory search carried out, Ketch noted with satisfaction that it was concluded almost as soon as it was begun.

Later that night, when Dean sat down across from him at the war table, and swallowed a shot of whiskey straight, hissing at the burn, and said to him, “You damn well owe Cas for saving your ass,”....

Ketch simply smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Ketch arrives in time, so Cas is almost completely untouched here if that would have stopped you reading on.


End file.
